


Catratober/Inktober She-Ra Flash Fic Collection

by KriegsaffeNo9



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Adora Is Poly If Only To Keep The Peace, Adora hooks up with everybody for peacekeeping purposes, Bad Puns, Catratober, Child Abuse, Cut Myself Shaving, Discussion of self harm, Double Trouble's naked body is described, Drabble, Drabble Collection, F/F, Flash Fic, Happy Birthday Angella, Happy Birthday Catra, Happy Birthday Mermista, In the coloquial sense of short fiction not literal 100 word fiction just to be clear, MOTU Classics Lore Reinterpreted, Mutual Pining, Pining, Polyamory, Shadow Weaver was the worst mother y'all, Slut Shaming, Suicidal Thoughts, Weird anatomy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-03
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2020-11-22 11:48:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 30
Words: 8,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20873717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KriegsaffeNo9/pseuds/KriegsaffeNo9
Summary: Very short musings from Adora and Catra.A combination of Catratober and an Inktober for She-Ra, adapted to short fiction because I'm not that great at drawing.For safety's sake I have bumped up the rating to M for strongly alluded-to sexual activity which is not seen on-screen.Italics title: Adora.Bold title: Catra.Chapter 17: Happy birthday, Queen Angella (MIA).Chapter 20: Happy birthday, Mermista.Chapter 26: Happy(?) birthday, Catra.





	1. Days 1 and 2

**Promise**

That's the absolute hell of it, Adora.

We never broke the promise.

We're not together, so nothing will ever be alright.

_Sword_

I can read my sword, kind of. There's runic writing along the blade. When the Sword of Protection changes shape, the writing changes.

When I picked it up the first time, it said "NOT DEAD, ONLY DREAMING."

Today it says "REMEMBER TO FEEL REAL."

...uh, I guess it also says "CONTAINMENT BREACH IN DWELL OF SOULS, CONTACT ADMINISTRATOR." But it's said that for a few weeks.

I know I should bring it up with Light Hope, but I don't know if I want to know what the Dwell of Souls is.

_Reflection_

I cut myself shaving today. I watched the blood trickle from my leg down into the water, spreading like a cloud in the mirrorclear water.

There's no deeper meaning. No satisfaction. It just hurts. There's this little stick thing I dab on the cut and it closes up, real convenient.

But I finished--I used the electric one that time, which is weird because I'm so used to doing it with a knife and oil, and I still feel little bumps. (Maybe phantom bumps. I don't know. I'll have to ask Glimmer.)

...I mean...

Ask Glimmer about my legs. I like them smooth. Silky.

I don't think I need to ask her about the gloves.

But I think I want to kiss them.

It kills me now, knowing she's hurt herself to feel better.

This is no way to feel better about anyone. Especially not yourself.

**Mirror**

Hey.

The fuck you staring at?

Don't make me cut you up.


	2. Day 3

_Isolation_

I'm not alone a lot.

At the Crystal Castle, there's Light Hope. Out on patrol, there's Swiftie. Even my own bedroom isn't that private; Glimmer and Bow are always visiting. Don't even get started about privacy in the Fright Zone; that took serious effort.

So when I'm alone in my room, with nothing but the waterfall and the Sword of Protection for company, it's kind of new to me.

In the night, with nobody at the foot of my bed and my heart a cored-out red mess...

It's like I'm back in the World That Was, in those last moments when everything fell away.

**Future**

Your blanket doesn't smell like anything anymore, Adora.

The past is always running out; memories fade, mementos wear out. And the future just keeps on coming.

Carving away my past one day at a time, leaving only the hurt behind.

(In my dreams I have a knife...)


	3. Day 3

**Woods**

Do humans feel this sort of thing when they're out in the savanna?

When I'm in the woods, it feels a little bit like coming home. I can set aside my forebrain a little while and just lose myself in the act of being a magickat.

Scampering up massive trees with the help of bone-cutting claws.

Prowling treetops, eyes trained on the forest floor, waiting for signs of rebels.

I can forget that I'm a person.

Instinct is in charge. Training is the driver. Catra's along for the ride, and she can pretend to be gone.

Give me the woods or give me nothing.

_Doubt_

How often do I doubt I'm doing a good job?

Every minute of every day.

How often do I doubt in my existence as a person?

Even more than that.

If you stop looking at me, am I still here?

...

...

Please don't forget me.


	4. Day 5

_Cold_

Frosta's actually pretty coo--

Wait. Not gonna finish that sentence.

Frosta, princess with an ice magic theme going, is in fact surprisingly pleasant.

Not just because she makes it suck a lot less in summer, but because she's cute as the dickens. And even though Bow doesn't like it, I like that one combat simulator she wants us to play, the one with just one kind of die but you roll a crapload of them all at once to, like, blow up moons and throw Snake People through mountains.

And I like it cold.

What can I say.

**Magic**

Don't fuckin' trust it.

Magic took my girl from me.


	5. Day 6

**Queen**

I think I saw Angella once during the Battle of Bright Moon.

They tell a bunch of stories about her. Some people say she was here for the arrival of Hordak, she spurned him or something and now she's trying to undermine her authority... or something.  
She's supposed to be ancient, so she has to have been here before Hordak. Funny, she fit into the whole Horde... Story... Thing... pretty seamlessly. She's the Adversary, the Morning Star, the fallen angel that ruined things for Etheria. She's why people sin and why Hordak has to be our salvation.

Never bought that. When I sin it's on my own time and my own dime.

I'll give her this, though: her hymns are way more fucking boss than Hordak's.

_Friendship_

Friendship was the first kind of family I actually had... come to think of it, it's the only family I've ever had.

I can count the number of adults who've had a positive impact on my life on one hand. Raz, Angella, Castaspella... Netossa and Spinnerella... that's about it.

Maybe Bow's dads. Are they a unit or individual? If they count as one, so do Spinny and Netty... that keeps it at one hand...

...

...yeah, I'm getting distracted.

If it weren't for Bow and Glimmer, I don't know where I'd be.

...

And you know what, I do know where I'd be.

Back in the Horde with Catra, blissfully ignorant of how many people I was hurting.


	6. Day 7

_Madness_

Light Hope showed me the Dwell of Souls today.

I followed her down an endless stairway--

\--well, it was really friggin' long, not literally endless, but whatever--

\--a figuratively endless stairway, and into what looked like a basement you'd find on an archaeology dig. Bare earth. Walls all scabbed over with I don't wanna know what. Smelled really bad. Didn't look like it belonged in the Crystal Castle.

There was a prison cell, like, not even a modern cell, like one you'd see in a cartoon with metal bars. Light Hope unlocked it and I walked through and on the floor was a barred hatch. Light Hope told me to step closer to it.

I did.

An arm, rotted down to the bone, thrust out of the pit, rotten meat catching on the bars of the cage. I yelped and backed away. More things tried to reach through: a pair of ruby-red insect legs, sucker-tipped amphinian arms. Something like a molten octopus tried to press through, and its one orange-and-yellow-striped eye... I think it was an eye... just glared at me. It didn't have any pupils, any whites, but I could tell it was furious. Hateful. And... envious.

Slime leaked out of the hatch against the pull of gravity, drops trickling up to the ceiling. A pair of well-manicured talons beckoned me to come closer.

I decided, yeah, I don't have to be here any longer.

Light Hope was waiting for me out of the cell. I asked her what the hell it was I just saw.

"The Dwell of Souls," she said. "This is the source of the power of Grayskull, the selfsame energies that power the She-Ra. When your weapon of office changes form, when you dawn a new guise, the power for such expenditures is drawn from here."

"Okay. Cool. But what is it?"

Light Hope hesitated, because of course she did, and said at last, "Once, the stars were right, and the true gods had free reign of the universe. Where they proliferated, third-dimensional lesser intelligences such as yourself and myself could not thrive; could barely survive, and only as slaves and cattle.

"King Grayskull and the Old Ones of Trolla, in those nightless times, found a way to make the stars unright. They emptied out the home of the gods, Despondos, and imprisoned them in the Dwell of Souls. And from the vast powers within he fashioned the Sword of HE, which means 'Sword of They Who Wish Only To Live Without Fear.' The sword was divided into its masculine aspect, the Sword of Power, and its feminine aspect, the Sword of Protection, equal in might, and given to those with the necessary qualities to defend reality from They From Outside and its inhabitants from tyranny.

"You are the latest in that distinguished line of She-Ra, whose name means 'Bearer Of The Sword Of HE In Its Aspect The Face Of Motherhood, Which Is To Say The Nurturer, For The Nurturer Is Found In All Whatever The Shape Of Body And Mind; Ever May She Reign As The Suns Cast Light On Those Who In Longing To Be Free Deserve Freedom.'"

"...it really means that," I said. "All of that, at once."

"Trollan is a language of efficiency."

I looked back at the prison cell.

"Can they escape? That grate didn't look invincible."

"Under normal circumstances, no," Light Hope said. "But..."

She was looking at the Sword of Protection.

"But?" I said.

"Recently, as you may recall, Despondos briefly ceased to exist. As did the Dwell of Souls. In that time, it appears..."

"...something escaped."

"Yes."

"Did Mara know that would happen?" I said. "I mean--that something might escape if someone tried to open a portal?"

"I don't know," Light Hope said, and I swear that she said it sadly.

"She can't have known," I said, putting my hand around where her shoulder would be if she were solid. "She wouldn't have put the entire universe in danger to... to protect us from ourselves."

Light Hope didn't say anything, and I don't want to guess what she might have said.

**Realization**

I had two brothers and three sisters. They were all born dead. I was the last one my mother gave birth to, and she died not long after seeing I was alive.

I know this because Shadow Weaver told me so all the time. She said I should've been born dead, too, and that I was a flaw in a flawed universe.

I think she was right. I think I make everything worse just by living.

It's good to have a purpose. We can't all have magic swords.


	7. Day 8

**Floating**

One time, me and Adora met one of the highest-ranking Force Captains around, Wrap Trap. He was being moved from storage to a ritual chamber to restore his whatever-juice so he could return to active duty. He said he was getting sick and wanted to rest in the hall while the movers took a smoke break. Shadow Weaver wasn't around, so why the hell not mess with the dead thing?

Wrap Trap is horrifying and horrible, but just that once, he didn't seem like a plague on legs. The jewelry and armor didn't look intimidating when he was lying there in his sarcophagus. He didn't even look dead, you know, despite being a living corpse. He just looked tired.

We talked to him a little bit. I don't remember most of what we said, but I remember the last thing I asked him.

"What's it like to be dead?"

He didn't have eyes, but he still looked me in mine. "...a feeling like floating," he said.

_Fear_

"...a feeling like floating."

Is Angella floating, wherever she is?

Is she dreaming?

Does she regret saving me?

If I fuck up, if this all goes away...

Will we all float together?


	8. Day 9

_Loneliness_

Hordak's written books. Lots of them. He's pretty selective about his past and usually he just goes on about different clones of Horde Prime that "count as" him. But he did tell a story about his second-in-command.

Skeletor was a disturbed man who lost his face in some kind of coup, thus his name. He called himself "evil" and was proud of it. And he had a right-hand woman, Evil-Lyn. According to Hordak, at least, Evil-Lyn was even more dangerously unhinged... wait, I think he said "unfettered..." is that a word?

Look it up later, Adora.

Anyway: Skeletor was dangerous and crazy, Evil-Lyn was even moreso. And Hordak asks her, why do you keep her around? She's just going to be a huge problem in the future.

And Skeletor said to him: "Because she makes me feel happy."

Hordak said: "We live an existence without happiness to ensure the universe thrives under Horde Prime's rule. We are not happy; we are content. We are lonely, because our loneliness is holy."

And Skeletor said: "Tell me about the loneliness of good. Is it equal to the loneliness of evil?"

Officially, Hordak had a big speech for that, but I don't think he really said it.

So...

I don't know what kind of loneliness I feel. I just know it's terrible.

**Parents**

My parentage is a little bit of a mystery.

Not my mom, obviously. My mom was Ailuros, a godswife of Bastet. My dad, though... well, there's three things getting in the way of knowing who he was.

One, mom was a godswife. That's like a priest, but slutty.

Two, magickats have litters like non-magick-cats. Every kitten can come from a different parent.

Three, the Horde burned all the records of the Bastet priesthood after they sacked our home country and genocided most of our people. (Not all at once. Lots commited suicide after their treatment in the Horde. I've never even met another one of me.)

So, yeah, I'm never, ever gonna know who my dad is. I've never lost sleep over it. At least I know, thanks to Shadow Weaver, my mom was the whore of a false god who gave me the most common Magickat girl name before shuffling off to Hell with the rest of the animals the Horde euthanized.

...

You know what I lose sleep over?

Knowing Shadow Weaver is out there, in the same fucking castle as Ado...

...

...as the enemies of the Horde. In stroking distance of yet another runestone.

(Catra was the name of the first magickat, mythically speaking. Her name means "the first cat who saw the sun and wondered why it could not be hers."

(Nobody knows what a sun is.)


	9. Day 10

**Mistakes**

Itemized:

Not killing Shadow Weaver

Not keeping the goddamn sword away from Adora

Associating with Scorpia

Not laying down the pecking order with Entrapta

Not killing Shadow Weaver even harder than that

_Children_

It's kind of crazy to wanna keep a promise you made as kids. You're a kid, you're dumb. The world is complicated.

But it still hurts thinking what kid me would think of me.


	10. Day 11

_Above_

Hordak is above you.

You're under his feet, and you should be glad to feel his boot press on your face.

I never really liked him anyway.

**Fire and Ice**

There's this song I heard Billie Goat singing the other day when I checked in on my Beast Rebels of the Hellscape.

You know, the horned goon? She was "Kyle" for a minute 'til she proved she was better than Regular Kyle? All those Snake Men from the Crimson Wastes? Anyway.

She was singing this song, really beautifully. There was this one line...

"[He asked me how I'd rather go, to burn with the fire or freeze in the snow.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTxK_otwEFo)"

Well, now, that's a damn good question, song.

I've been in the snow. Snow sucks. I don't care how much it hurts, at least fire will take you with some dignity. At least a fire worth the name.

Hey.

If I die in a fire, make sure I'm totally cremated, okay? I'd rather not leave a bunch of burnt meat behind. Even if you can't, that's still better than a no-dignity catsicle, at least.


	11. Day 12

**Moonlit**

Like, what, there's something other than moonlight?

...I mean, besides candles. Or flashlights. Or arclamps. Or phosfurr... fosso... the glowy shit that some things have. Or are.

Hey. How about we pretend this conversation never happened?

_Below_

The further underground you go in the Fright Zone, the more inhospitable it becomes. Catra used to say that at the bottom of the deepest subbasement she'd ever been sent to, the walls were made of flesh with teeth for all the shelves.

I can't tell if she was kidding or not, because I've seen a lot of the Fright Zone and it's just terrible. The worst.


	12. Day 13

_Fury_

It's taken me months of talking with psychological traige... people... to just say the simple fact that I've killed people. I've killed people. Not one-to-one, not their heads in my hands or my sword in their gut, but... like, I've blown up tanks and the drivers couldn't get away in time, or I blew up a facility and there were stragglers, or...

...things like that.

I try to kill as few people as possible. It feels bad to kill someone.

If I gave in to hate and just swung the Sword of Protection with intent to kill, I don't know what would happen to me.

There are nightmares where I know that the feeling is, the feeling of the Sword passing through skin and meat and bone.

In the worst nightmares, it feels good. And I'm laughing.

It's the worst.

**Claws**

I have 'em. They're neat.  
...  
...  
...  
...

Too short? Man, fuck you, I'm not a trained talking cat here to blather on for your amusement.

Okay, fine. Lore.

Claws are sacred to magickats. They're as sharp as your soul and the more pure and dedicated you are the sharper they are. And that's how I can cut the She-Ra. Because I'm more pure than her.

Officially.


	13. Day 14

**Reg** _ret_

When you were mine, I didn't love you enough.

Every part of me hurts in your absence.

When I dream, and it's sweet, it's always of you.


	14. Day 15

**Legends**

They say it was Callix King-Killer who struck down King Micah, but things got pretty damn crazy at that point in the fight. He says he got a trophy, but who can really identify a body from most of a skull? Callix got himself killed for conspiring against Hordak, so we'll never know what's true.

Whether he's a legend or a poser depends on who you ask. That's all a legend is; somebody you can lie about and nobody can know you lied.

[There's a song about that, Billie?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfJGmY9-TBQ)

_She'll never know that she drove him away  
_

_As a coward I admire his courageous ways  
_

_Anxiety_

Ah, anxiety.

My oldest friend.

Been anxious since I was a baby. I'm anxious thinking about She-Ra, hell, I'm anxious being She-Ra. Sleepless nights. Constant nightmares. Visions from the planet that make me anxious to know them. Girlfriend lost her mind. Angella's gone.

You better believe it's fun to be Adora.

[There's a song about that, Bow?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhRwYZSSoIs)

_You're the product of another time,_

_So feeling low, well, that's no crime._


	15. Day 16

_Mercy_

It's the moral imperative of the She-Ra to do as little killing as possible. Her powers are vast and her defenses mighty; it would be irresponsible, even hubristic, to just effortlessly cut down the people of the Horde.  
I don't know what I'll do about Hordak when I get there.

**Anger**

_Goddamn it, Kyle_, if my hands were around your throat right now I'd ventilate your neck so you can practice drowning in your own blood.


	16. Day 17

**Child**

I don't remember what it was like to be a kid. I have memories of being a kid, boy do I do, but... I hear "childlike innocence" and "hope for the future" and I've never had either. Or I don't remember feeling either.

I was ready to die by the time I was eight. If Shadow Weaver ever nutted up and went through with it, I would've been ready.

...that cunt.

_Forgiveness_

Sometimes I realize that Catra nearly killed a universe--this one--this one in which we live. All of it. Every living person on Etheria. Its entire history, back and forth.

We made it by the last second. We lost the Morning Star to save reality.

How can you forgive someone for that?

How can you even measure a sin that... huge? That all-encompassing?

How can you forgive someone for that?

And...

...and why do I want to?

I'm not an idiot. I'm not trying to think up reasons to forgive her.

I just...

I just want her to...

You know.

Act like she wants me to forgive her.


	17. Unburdened by Feathers

_Return_

It was the queen's birthday today. I could go on about what it technically is, but nobody cares. It's the day they set aside to eat cake and sing hymns for the Morning Star. And she isn't here for it.

The hymns play over loudspeakers, through magical conjurations of the singers, and through performers playing along with the first two. It's inescapable. It's beautiful. And this year, it hurts.

* * *

Angella didn't believe in an afterlife.

"The gods are cruel," she said. "And no one, not a one person in all the universe, is perfect enough for them. If I believed in something past death, I would believe in damnation for everyone I have ever loved. Nothingness is better. It's better to just be released from pain. Better to pass from one dream to the next."

I think about what the Horde must be doing, knowing that Angella is cast into an emptiness without ending, deprived of death. I bet they're saying some very, very awful things, and I don't want to imagine any of them, and if I ever know, I will kill Hordak with my own hands. I won't even be She-Ra. I'll cast him into nothingness as Adora.

I didn't want to ask her, but she said it for me instead.

"I don't... I don't hold any sort of hope that I'll ever reunite with Micah. Or Absalom, or Ledea, or Hyla... I could be here for hours, naming the people I'll never see again. They live on only in me.

"It's unsatisfying. But the universe is unsatisfying. I have been blessed to love and have been loved so much... more than I could ever return."

* * *

The first hymn was at morning, of course.

"He Is."

I held Glimmer's hand and she sniffled and tears streaked down her cheeks when her eyes welled too full, but she didn't cry, she didn't sob. She just listened and looked into my eyes and held my hand.

I didn't say anything about the queen. I just kept her eyes on me and said, "I love you."

I meant it. I don't use those words lightly.

I love you, Glimmer.

* * *

"One of your titles," Angella told me, "is 'Fog-Weaver.' Do you know why?"

I said I didn't, because I really didn't know.

"It is said," Angella said, and she touched my hair. I don't know why. But she did. I felt a sort of calmness. "It is said," she started again, "that the She-Ra belongs to neither the old gods nor the new, nor to Hordak, nor to me. Your power is the power found in all living things, the potential for greatness manifest in one woman. You bring glory to the mundane. You are one person made great by the power of people. You protect the people from predation by things higher and lower than them. You are the fog that eats the light and sound of higher and lower places."

I don't know if that's true. I mean, I know my power comes from a bunch of caged gods, for one.

But it was a man who put them down there.

So maybe there's a little something there.

"Remember," she told me. "You are not mine. Your power is greater than what I could give you."

"But I can still be your subject, yeah?"

"Always. It makes me..." She didn't finish that sentence. "I am proud to have you under my banner."

She hugged me. It was weird, maybe, at the time. But I allowed it.

* * *

At noon the Princess Alliance met. We had lunch. We talked shop. And a second hymn played: "From the Pinnacle to the Pit." The story, in metaphor, of how Angella came to be. It's a proud one, glorious, and that was what finally made the dam break.

It was Perfuma, actually, who lost it first, just breaking out into those full-body sobs that happen when you're good and superhumanly miserable. Then it was Glimmer, then Me, and, well, by the end it was Bow and Mermista being the strong shoulders to cry on. Bow was doing his share of the crying, but he could speak more clearly, express what we were thinking, what we had to say. Mermista bore it all in miserable silence.

Maybe it was something that had to happen. We had to work it all out as best we could in one terrible burst or we couldn't make it through the rest of the day.

We made it through the afternoon, at least.

* * *

Angella wasn't easy to live with.

She was high strung in a way that... well, I won't name names. But I know at least one woman who was as tense as her, and nearly incapable of loosening up.

She lost patience with Glimmer a bunch.

Her movements were slow and conservative and meant to outlast a foe that was growing like a cancer, ever-stronger.

She thought in cosmic scales even at the personal.

She was sad and prone to great melancholy at the worst times.

And she loved me like a mother.

When she looked at me and smiled, happy I was safe, proud of what I had done...

I told Light Hope that I don't remember anything from being a baby.

But when she smiled at me, with that satisfied look...

I can almost make out a face. Pale like mine. Red hair, maybe. Eyes... dark. Of course, dark. Babies don't have great vision. But it's familiar.

Maybe it's just the face of a mother. The face of someone who cares that you succeed, who wants to see you happy, who's glad when you come home safe even if you aren't totally successful, who points you where you need to go, and who prods you when you've fallen short. Not because she wants to see you cry, not because she wants to make you squirm, but because she knows you can be better.

She was a mother, a good one.

* * *

I told her as much:

"Glimmer, you don't know how lucky you are to have had a wonderful mother and father."

"I know," she said, and we hugged as the last song played as the bright moon fell below the horizon.

[Her favorite song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3ZeUL4fRyk).

* * *

"Humans... all peoples... they want to love, they want to be good to each other," she said. "But violence is so easy. It comes forth without being asked. People can know exactly what to do, and still do the wrong thing. It isn't because they're unworthy or made wrong or lacking the light of God; people are imperfect. It is in--it is in trying, it is in living to be better, it is in making a harsh universe better for everyone around them, that they become perfect. That, I think, is what I love most about people.

"Gods have no excuse. They do what they want and it is justified.

"People know they can be better, and try to be so."

* * *

Glimmer didn't cry; and neither did I.

Maybe you'll be here again in time, Angella.

If you do, I hope we can return half the love you've given us.

**Time**

Hordak announced tonight over every audio broadcasting thing in the Fright Zone: we were to observe a thirty-second moment of silence in tribute to the Morning Star.

You know, I'd say something here... but that wing-havin' fucker really got one over on all of us.


	18. Day 19

**Stars**

They're what you see when you get hit on the head.

It's that five- or six- or four-pointed symbol.

It's slang for "distant light," like what you see when you get hit on the head.

There's the Star Sisters, those freak-ass mineral bitches, and the Comet Warriors, but they're all about meaningless, stupid names anyway. I mean, the fuck's a comet? The fuck's a star?

Same thing, man.

Stars. Bastet, man. Get out of my face.

_Time_

Three o'clock in the morning.

I remember hearing--maybe it was in an old story--that most people who die in hospitals die at three in the morning, when all your processes are at their lowest. It's the witching hour, dark as it gets.

When I can't sleep, three o'clock is the hour that passes the longest. A second's not a second. I can listen to music--I have--and I swear that a song that's only four minutes long in the light of day doesn't shave four minutes off of three o'clock in the morning.

Sometimes I think I should make more nocturnal friends so I have someone I can tag in at 3 o'clock.


	19. Day 20

_Hope_

Sometimes I think about how many people have pinned their hopes on me--how many people I stand to let down when I fail--and I feel a little like I have to sit down.

The good news is, the Princess Alliance exists. I'm not alone. I don't have to do any of this by myself.

Thanks, guys.

You're the hope I need.

**Memories**

All I have left.

Losing 'em day by day.

Not that I'm forgetting that fast, of course.

But like your blanket that doesn't smell like anything, they're losing all their comfort.


	20. Day 21

**Sweets**

Semi-forbidden.

You gotta earn them with Non-Nutrient Edibles credit, which most people use for edible drugs, which, I don't know how they are outside the Horde, come in the form of what feels like edible dough.

Cookie dough? No, like, that gray stuff that kids play with when they earn playtime credits. Same flavor, even. I think it's the same stuff.

Entrapta is the first person I've seen to actually blow all their points on sweets. And now she's on Beast Island.

No sweets there, are there, bitch?

_Vast_

The sea is the only thing left that makes me feel small that doesn't also make me feel helpless. Which is weird, I know, because Mermista's told me all about the things in the sea and how they're terrifying and gigantic, even bigger than that one sea monster I punched. Somehow that just doesn't freak me out like it freaks some people out.

The sea was here before any of us. It's older than the Power of Grayskull. It doesn't judge, it doesn't have a voice. It just exists, and life flourishes there. It may look weird, but lots of land-stuff looks weird, too. From what I remember of my science classes in Brightmoon, it's where all life comes from, too.

I'm not from Etheria, but wherever I came from, our ancestors came from the sea, too. No matter what else is different, we all have that in common.

It's Mermista's birthday, by the way. So here I am with her on a boat in the middle of the sea. No sound but the waves and wind. Nobody but us (and a communicator in case the Alliance needs me quick).

We're out here for a lot of reasons, but it's really just the one.

I don't know when I took it up consciously. Maybe it was seeing so many people's faces wear that same expression--unique to everyone wearing it, all communicating the exact same thing. "I wanna have sex with you, really hard."

Maybe it's just to keep the peace--let 'em know that there's no competition that needs to be going on. Maybe I'm just desperately lonely and desperately horny. Maybe I just need to try and forget...

...you know, the things I could stand to forget about.

So as we're on the deck, taking in the rays, Mermista looks at me, and I look at her, and we know what's going to happen. And it's just a matter of who asks first.

And that moment is somehow the most exciting, even if the rest of it is more... eventful.

In the moment before everything happens, it's all potential, the sweetest kind.

[A sea of possibility](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DT7Yqqr27PY).


	21. Day 22

_Free_

Sometimes I wonder if anyone is ever really free.

It's not the worst thing, I guess. Duty to guide our conscience. History to remind us of what we're here to do.

I know what you're going to say.

I just want you to know I don't appreciate who you're going to name.

**Safe**

No place is safe in the Fright Zone. You can't even take bunkrooms for granted. If the Fright Zone decides something's gonna go wrong, it goes wrong, and you just have to be ready to wake up in fright.

I know what you're going to say.

Having an extra pair of eyes and ears is just inherently safer. So fuck you.


	22. Day 23

**Hidden**

There is a part of you you can never show to someone else. An innermost self, a secret person that is more you than anyone else can ever know.

Adora saw it my innermost self in the World That Was, and so I can never be happy again.

_Bright_

Apparently, in the wider universe where there are "stars," most of them are also "suns." Suns are like the Bright Moon. According to Light Hope, the Bright Moon is an incomplete star, something that almost achieved full... something or other... but fizzled out. Etheria is closer to the Bright Moon than most planets with life are to their suns.

I asked her if something could make the Bright Moon finish the job and turn into a sun, and she told me that it would be better if I told nobody what she taught me.

You can keep a secret, right?


	23. Day 24

_Star_

I saw them once when I was a baby.

I'll live to see them again.

**Teacher**

I don't want to sound melodramatic, but if it weren't for Billie Goat I wouldn't know the first fucking thing about Snake Men. She's full of useful shit:

"Double Trouble is an avatar of King Hsss, who's an avatar of Yig Snake Daddy, so that makes them a quarter True God... I think. So talk to 'em with your indoor voice. And if they ask you to see their first skin, you can't say no."

"Snake Man venom is...whachacallit... it freezes muscles. So if you breathe in mist, you freeze up. If you get it sprayed on you, what it touches goes to sleep, like, immediately. And if you get bitten? Boy you're fucked.

"Yeah, Tung Lashor had it all over his tongue, thus the name, and, uh, the lisp. No, it wasn't stretchy or nothin', so he might as well not have had it at all."

We had a good laugh at him. And at his stupid fucking name. God, Tung Lashor had a stupid name.

It was good to lead the Snake Men in his stead... I mean, technically they answer to Lord Gr'asp, but fuck 'em. It's all me, with my loyal henchmen Billie Goat and Four-Skin.

...you know, the one with the four arms? Skin's really tough? Thus the name. Yes, you have to clean under Four-Skin regularly or there's this nasty build-up. Billie taught me that. Why, she been telling everyone or something?


	24. Day 25

**Home**

There are stories that there's a secret home for magickats, a last redoubt where those who escaped the purge live, working great sorceries in honor of Bastet to bring a magical punishment down on the Horde.

If they're real, they're fucking cowards, and seeing as how their big magic ritual thing has done exactly zero to stop us so far, they're also stupid.

If they're fake... I'm glad they're all dead, every last stupid magickat who's supposed to be with them.

_Memory_

I can't get lost in the past. Can't afford it.

Some days, it's all I want to do.


	25. Day 26

_Acceptance_

The world's changed forever.

I can't live for yesterday when tomorrow's looming over me like the blade of a guillotine.

...

This is going to hurt to say.

But it's gotta be said.

For the honor of Grayskull, I will raise my blade against the Horde until all the people of Etheria are free.

And if Catra stands against me...

...

...

...to...

...to hell with her.

**Savior**

If the She-Ra can stomp out of the darkness and remake the Princess Alliance, surely someone can do the same for the Horde.

They better not wait for a damn magic sword, either.

No volunteers? Sure. I got it.


	26. What We Both Feel

**Birthday**

I'm twenty years old. Big fucking deal.

Got wasted with the Beast Rebels of the Hellscape, passed out. Woke up a few minutes ago, face down on a table. Everything smells like beer and toilet wine, which is what we have to get drunk with in the Horde. I have just enough strength, and it's just dark enough, to open one eye and see what it is that's woken me up.

Somehow, against all odds, Billie and Four are still awake. Four's playing solitare. Billie's maybe a drop or two of hard stuff away from sleep, judging by how she's tilting in her seat like she's on a boat in rough waters.

[She's singing.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SBY_fUpmnQ)

I hate it. But she sings too pretty to shut her up.

So here I am, twenty years old, feeling a hangover creep up on me, and listening to Better Kyle sing.

I'm not thinking about Adora.

_Love_

Glimmer is a very good person to kiss. When it comes to kisses, she's the recipient; she stands on tiptoes and purses her lips and waits for me to complete it. It used to be she wore this perfume that smelled like cotton candy, you know, when she was feeling cheerful, so kissing her smelled like cotton candy. Nowadays she wears what smells like perfume. It's not bad--it's pleasant, I think eau de toilette (which if you don't know smells vaguely powdery and like nothing specific)--but it's not cute. She hasn't been feeling cute for a while. Can you blame her?

Perfuma does a lot of cheek-kissing. It used to be she was shy--she had to work up to kissing my lips by starting with my cheeks, then my chin, then my nose, and then at last my lips. Nowadays, especially after the... late unpleasantness... she just jumps in my arms and lays it on. She's passionate, aggressive. It usually doesn't stop at kissing, especially nowadays. Perfuma smells like roses; she always smells like roses, it's part of her Talent.

Mermista is the one who takes charge. She likes to pin me against a wall and just force her mouth on mine--like, "force" in a good way, if that made you nervous. She does come on strong, though... our very first kiss had tongue. Of the princesses in my little black book, she's the one I see the least, 'cause she's gotta be in the right mood and I have to be in the right mood, but when it matches up, oh boy, does it. She takes the lead, unless I'm She-Ra. I try not to abuse the privilege for kissing, but, well, sometimes the mood strikes. Only then is Memrista gentle, soft in my hands, like a fainting maiden in a romance novel She washes with some undersea washing... something. It smells herbal, whatever it is, like fancy tea. Her hair smells like fancy tea and ocean breeze.

Frosta? Peck on the forehead once. Made her blush. It was cute.

Bow? Not my type. You know... a guy.

When Catra kisses you, you know it. She crawls on top of me when she wants to kiss me. Her lips are rough. There's little scars on her lower lip from one bad tasering that made her bite her own lip, and they're fine lines amid the scratches. She could stand to use lip balm, I suppose, but that would weaken their character. Her tongue is scratchy, by the way, like a cat's, which makes for a strange experience, let me tell you, you know, when I really got into kissing her. She whispers when kissing. "You're mine. You're all mine, little blondie." Plus, uh, stuff that's unprintable.

She kisses me by gently batting her head against mine, forehead to forehead, cheek to cheek. It means she's at home and happy. She kisses me by matching my gaze and blinking leisurely. It means she feels safe.

God...

I'm doing it again.

There is an absence in my life, a need, and I've sworn war against the person who can fill it.

Adora, you declared war for a reason. She's lost her good sense. She hurt you. She... fuck, why didn't you lead with "tried to kill the universe?" Why did... why do you...

...

Aaagggh, _fuck_!

Why can't I stop thinking with my heart? Why does my heart still beat for her? After all this? After everything? Why do I sit here with Glimmer and Mermista and Perfuma all here at once, warm and soft and strong, the whole bed smelling like a garden, and all I can think about is...

**Birthday**

Better Kyle is singing.

I'm surrounded by Snake Men who would fight and die for me if I gave the word, who trust me implicitly for the way I beat the ass of their former leader. Hordak doesn't seem to think less of me after the whole apocalypse thing. I have never been more powerful and higher in all the Horde.

And I'm alone and I hate myself.

I've always hated myself. But I was never alone until Adora left.

Maybe I should just...

...

...quit while I'm ahead...

I close my eye and listen to Billie and try to just exist.

It's not working.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a lot of music on my Catradora playlist that could go here, but only the Silent Hill 3 selection matched the feeling of the fanfic (Horned Goon/Billie Goat being voiced by the singer of said song contributes too). But others I've listened to for the Catradora feeling:
> 
> "Gives You Hell" by the All-American Rejects.  
"Baby, You're A Haunted House" by Gerard Way.  
"Don't Let Me Be Lonely Tonight" by James Taylor.  
"Reptile" by Nine Inch Nails for how Catra feels. (Super explicit lyrics and extremely gruesome subject matter.) I'm probably gonna quote this one in a later fic, fair warning.  
And, of course, the song I've used before: "Great Spaces" by King Black Acid, off of the Mothman Prophecies soundtrack.


	27. Day 28

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did Catra's birthday entries out of order because I felt like it. Or forgot what day it was. It's been a long week, yo.

_Kinship_

Guys?

I'd die for you.

I mean--cripes, that's my job description--but if we'd only just met, if I never was She-Ra, if something put me in your lives--

Even if I were just any other woman, I'd die for you.

**Running**

Some of these Beast Rebels of the Hellscape were ex-Horde. Now they're Horde again. Normally desertion means summary execution, but seeing as how She-Ra just pissed in our cereal in a big way, I'm guessing Hordak's in a forgiving mood.

You know, Adora, if you change your mind, that means you can just waltz back in.

I... I'm pretty sure. You know, if you were sorry.

Maybe... maybe check with me first, if you wanna come back.


	28. Day 29

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written before actually seeing Double Trouble on the show, knowing only that they exist, are non-binary, and hoping that they're a Snake Mannic Non-Binary.
> 
> Also, their naked snake body is described in this chapter.

**Separate**

I've made a few discoveries about Double Trouble today. First, I learned they were very religious.

"This body is all bodies," they said. They shrugged off their clothes. "This body is all bodies as it is the body of King Hsss."

The Beast Rebels--the Snake Men and Snake Mannic Women, at least--hiss in response. Drummers thump away in multiple overlapping rhythms. Bodies sway and tangle around me.

Double Trouble's showing their first skin, the one they were born with. The second thing I learned is that Snake Men, and Snake Mannic Women, and I guess Snake Mannic Non-Binary Types, have two sets of genitals... or, like, bilateral genitals? I don't know the term and I don't wanna ask Billie right now. Or Scorpia.

So, skip this paragraph if you don't wanna know what's in D.T.'s pants: for you see, on Double Trouble's right is something that looks like a potted cactus, one that's entirely made of soft stuff. It's a little longer than my thumb, not that I'm going to touch it or even hold my hand that close to it to make sure. On Double Trouble's left is a little pink slit, not quite a vagina--a vagina has a lot more going on, you know, visually.

D.T. is dancing. It's a slow, swaying dance. As they dance, a line draws around each of their eyes, a fine black line that looks like a snake's head seen from the side. Then their eyes pop free on snake heads growing from Double Trouble's head. Then more lines draw and more snakes pop free, down their head, their body, their sides, their arms. Everything above the waist.

Double Trouble's upper body becomes a nest of snakes. The Snake Men hiss in unison, a perfect hiss: the name of their king, which is the name of their god.

The last takeaway I got: Double Trouble is kind of intense sometimes.

Actually, make that one more takeaway: don't fuck with Double Trouble. All those fangs they have are dripping with venom.

_Happiness_

The first time I had a good night's sleep in Brightmoon.

The first time I eked a clean win over the Horde in Plumeria.

Rescuing Glimmer, in those moments before we thought Entrapta had died.

(When--no. Don't think about that.)

Standing tall and saving Brightmoon, the Alliance at my side, our powers unified for the first time.

My friends understanding and naming the feeling that's haunted my entire life, and the first step I took in combating it.

(don't say it don't say it don't say it)

At last, discovering my power to heal, and using it. Even if it was for that rotten bitch of a... I mean, that rotten bitch, Shadow Weaver.

And... those are the happiest times in my life, so far. In order. I think.

(don't say it don't think it don't say it don't think it don't say it don' think it)

(Cat--)

(don't say it don't think it don't say it don't think it don't say it don't think it don't say it don't think it don't say it don't think it if you do it will fill your brain and it will never go away and you'll never be happy again)

I'm not happy right now.

I'm getting a drink.


	29. Day 30

_Together_

The nights are growing longer and the days shorter. The air was chill; now it's biting cold. It's not the season. It's the absence. It's a feeling that something is coming, something bad, something huge, something to make the end of all things feel like the drawing of a breath before vomiting out a cascade of napalm.

I think of the absence in the Dwell of Souls.

I think of the absence on the throne of Brightmoon.

I think of the absence of Catra like a knife in my side.

I think of the presence of Catra in my memories like a hook in my cheek.

I think we must face this arriving thing together or we will all die screaming.

**Apologies**

In my dreams I have a knife.

In my dreams the Horde is at my feet, worshiping me; they call me God. Because I killed Hordak, the Lord Our God, and I am sitting in his throne. That makes me God.

In my dreams Etheria is burning and there is nothing left, no life, no hope, and I breathe my last, and that emptiness is God, that stillness. The whole useless enterprise of life coming to a halt.

In my dreams Adora and I are holding hands and there has never been a Horde, never been a Shadow Weaver, and we love each other and are happy, and these nightmares are the worst of all, because it's the life I would have had if I were a good person.

In my dreams I was born dead. This is the one most just, because I should have been born dead, one last warm, still worm pulled free of my mother.

Forgive me, Adora, for ever being born.


	30. Last Goodbye

**Happiness**

Hordak is a decrepit old man, a failing clone in a mechanical shell. If I am fast, if I am decisive, he can't bring that cybernetic weaponry to bear. I'm faster than him. I'm more evil than him. I will cast God down and become a new God.

And maybe, at last, Adora will kill me.

It's the shape of our lives. It's what we've all been working up to. We will meet each other in battle, and one of us will win, and the other will be wiped from this stupid fucking planet with all its stupid fucking people and it will be done, at fucking last.

I've never been happy, Adora.

But when I was with you, when we loved each other, I could pretend.

When you were in my life, when you were the only peace I ever knew, I could sleep at the foot of your bed and know I was safe.

You pledged your heart to a monster, and heroes are here to kill monsters.

I love you, Adora.

When you kill me, the world will be made more perfect.

_Forever_

That's the absolute hell of it, Catra.

We never broke our promise.

We're not together, so everything's fallen into chaos.

But chaos isn't eternal. Nothing ever stays the same forever. Even eternal things can change. Even the impossible can be surmounted.

I don't do plans. I do promises.

And you know I've never broken one yet.

I can't pretend to know how. If I said I had reason to hope for it, I'd be lying. All I have to go on are memories of when you smiled--not at someone's pain, but because were happy.

I will save the world, and I'll save you.

I promise.

I love you, Catra.


End file.
